Posts Tagged ‘Social networking’

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Facebook and Co steal search sector’s crown

Tuesday, June 8th, 2010

UK internet users have visited more social networking sites than search engines in one month than ever before.

Data released by research firm Hitwise shows that visits to social networks accounted for 11.88 per cent of all UK internet visits in May, compared to search engine visits which made up 11.33 per cent.

Facebook brought in the majority of users, claiming 55 per cent of all social networking and forum visits. YouTube comes a considerable way behind, with 16.5 per cent of sector traffic during May. Twitter finishes off the top three, with 2.08 per cent of all traffic.

In terms of search sites, Google dominates the market with Google UK and Google.com accounting for over 91 per cent of all search traffic.

Despite the ever growing popularity of social networking, Google’s dominance of the search market means it retains its position as the most visited website in the UK, accounting for 9.29 per cent of all visits. Facebook takes second place with 7.04 per cent.

By Richard Morris

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Posted in Google, Social Networks, searches | No Comments »

Yahoo changes highlight importance of social media

Monday, June 7th, 2010

Yahoo has today officially announced a raft of site changes, highlighting the importance businesses are now placing on social media.

The California firm said in a statement that from this week it will expand its relationship with social networking site Facebook. Users of both sites will be able to link their accounts and share and view updates. Their Facebook news feeds will be available through the Yahoo homepage, Yahoo Mail and other company services.

Similar functionality for Twitter users will be implemented later this year, according to Yahoo.

Cody Simms, senior director of Social Platforms and Yahoo! Developer Network, said: “More and more, people rely on social sites to share and discover information that matters to them, making Yahoo! uniquely positioned to provide people with all of the mainstream methods of content discovery – social, search, communications, and editorial.

“Starting with Facebook, we are bringing all of these elements together to give people one simple, trusted place to share information and connect. We think this offers great benefit to people across the web, and it’s key to helping Yahoo! extend our reach and increase engagement.”

Unsurprisingly, following the criticism recently levelled at Facebook, Yahoo has gone out of its way to stress the importance of privacy in an effort to maintain users’ trust.

The changes being announced today include a refresh of Yahoo Profiles, which was launched in 2008 to allow people to manage all their personal details in one place. A new version of the system, called Yahoo Pulse, will “make its privacy settings easier to use and to give people a central dashboard to manage what they share on Yahoo!”.

Making sure no one misses the point about its commitment to protecting users’ privacy, the company adds: “Yahoo! is deeply committed to privacy – not just as a written policy, but as a fundamental consideration applied to each and every Yahoo! site and service.

“Yahoo! offers simple controls so that everyone can change who sees their updates, or turn off their updates stream at any time.”

By Richard Morris

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Posted in Advertising and Marketing, Yahoo | No Comments »

The tweet goes on – five billion messages in less than three months and Twitter shows no sign of slowing

Tuesday, June 1st, 2010

The 15 billionth Twitter post was sent over the weekend of May 29 and 30, just a few months after the social networking site passed the 10 billion message mark.

According to social media and marketing blog The Wall, it has taken about 12 weeks for the those five billion new Tweets to be posted. It suggests that the speed of the achievement is due to Twitter users becoming more active – although it does sound a note of scepticism about the proportion of spam messages.

Blog post author Gordon MacMillan said: “I’ve certainly noticed more and more people on Twitter – a lot since the election in the UK particularly.”

Twitter itself only last month claimed it had 105 milion users, although there were no statistics to show what proportion of this number was active.

And a major revamp of the site was unveiled last week, allowing Spanish, French, German and Italian speakers to access help pages in their native tongue. The site’s help pages now contain answers to every question the site claims it has ever received.

As @crystal promised in the post announcing the latest update: “This is just the first round of improvements… Stay tuned for even more improvement in the upcoming months.”

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Posted in Events, Internet, Mobile, News, Other News, Social Media, Social Networks, Social News, Twitter, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Arabs prefer Facebook to newspapers, says survey

Tuesday, May 25th, 2010

A new survey is claiming that there are now more people in the Arab world who are Facebook users than there are newspaper readers.

The research was conducted by a Dubai-based PR agency, according to a report by the BBC.

The company said it found there are now over 15 million users of the social network, while the number of newspapers sold in Arabic, English and French stands as just below 14 million.

When the agency calculated figures in Egypt, it found 3.5 million facebookers – far more than the readership of any daily newspaper in the county.

By Richard Morris

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Posted in Advertising and Marketing, Facebook, Social Networks | No Comments »

Facebook founder moves to allay privacy fears

Monday, May 24th, 2010

The founder of social networking site Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, has admitted his company “missed the mark” following  a backlash from users over recent privacy issues.

Writing in the Washington Post, Zuckerberg said Facebook has grown rapidly and now boats over 400 million users across the world. And while the company has moved fast to serve the community, he admits “Sometimes we move too fast, and after listening to recent concerns, we’re responding.”

An increasing number of people have become concerned about the security of their personal information on Facebook, while some high profile users have threatened to leave the site in protest.

Last week Facebook admitted it had been passed on data to advertisers that could potentially allow them to access personal information on a user who had clicked on one of their adverts.

Zuckerberg said: “The biggest message we have heard recently is that people want easier control over their information. Simply put, many of you thought our controls were too complex.

“Our intention was to give you lots of granular controls; but that may not have been what many of you wanted. We just missed the mark.”

Facebook now plans to alter its privacy controls so they are “much simpler to use” and also provide an easy way to turn off third-party applications.

By Richard Morris

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Posted in Facebook, Social Networks | No Comments »

More privacy concerns as Facebook data gets sent to advertisers

Friday, May 21st, 2010

By Richard Morris

Facebook has sent data to advertisers which could allow companies to identify personal details of users who’ve clicked on their ads.

An article by the Wall Street Journal says that social networking sites such as Facebook and Myspace have been sending advertising companies data that could be used to identify the names of users, along with other personal data.

The revelations come despite some companies promising that they do not share such information with advertisers without the consent of users.

According to the paper, most companies it spoke to defended the practice, which involves sending details of user names or Id’s linked to personal profiles which were being viewed when users clicked on adverts.

In recent months social networking sites, especially Facebook, have been under increasing pressure to tighten their security and privacy controls to protect users.

The journal said that by Thursday morning Facebook had “rewritten some of the offending computer code”.

A spokesman for Facebook admitted the company has been passing on data to advertisers that could allow them to tell if a particular Facebook user had clicked on an advert. He said the code identifying users had now been removed.

He said: “We were recently made aware of one case where if a user takes a specific route on the site, advertisers may see that they clicked on their own profile and then clicked on an ad. We fixed this case as soon as we heard about it.”

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Posted in Advertising and Marketing, Facebook | 2 Comments »

MySpace turns to event ads to boost coffers

Thursday, April 15th, 2010

Social networking website MySpace is set to launch a new advertising offer this evening as it overhauls its events listings service.

The website has suffered following the success of rival companies such as Twitter and Facebook, but hopes to claw its way back into favour with users by exploiting its reputation as a forum for music fans. MySpace has helped launch a number of successful music careers, most notably Lily Allen and the Arctic Monkeys.

To capitalise on this strength, the company is launching a new service that will add one million concert listings with a new calendar and links to buy tickets, according to a report by the Associated Press.

Promoters will be able to purchase listing space which will show up in users’ calendars and on profile pages in order to advertise their events.

The Press Association reported that Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is promoting an event to sell merchandise that goes with DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc.’s latest movie, How To Train Your Dragon.

MySpace co-president, Jason Hirschhorn, said: “As we look at the future of MySpace, it’s important to diversify our revenue streams, but also to figure new ways to integrate advertising.”

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Posted in Advertising and Marketing, Social Networks | No Comments »

Google's Buzz can still make an impact despite bumpy start

Tuesday, April 6th, 2010

Google has been applauded by some members of the blogging world for taking another step to rectify the privacy issues highlighted after the launch of its social networking tool Buzz.

Yesterday afternoon the search firm said in a blog post it would be introducing a confirmation page, allowing Buzz users to review their settings.

Social Media site Mashable, said: “The page isn’t anything new — it’s really just the Google Buzz settings page. However, Google’s taking a step in the right direction by giving every user a big opportunity to change their privacy settings. It had to be done.”

“Despite the scandal surrounding this single feature, Google’s Gmail and Buzz have a powerful privacy advantage over Facebook and Twitter”, said Wired’s Eliot Van Buskirk, noting that the secure HTTP connection means you do not need to be as concerned about people picking up your private communications.

Google launched Buzz at the start of February, hoping the tool which is attached to Gmail, would give it a healthier slice of the social networking marketplace. However, the US firm soon found itself defending Buzz following major concerns over privacy.

Within days, Google said it would remove a controversial feature which meant contacts on Gmail would automatically be followed by Buzz.

In a blog post at the time, Buzz product manager Todd Jackson, said: “We quickly realised that we didn’t get everything quite right. We’re very sorry for the concern we’ve caused and have been working hard ever since to improve things based on your feedback. We’ll continue to do so.”

Not all bloggers are convinced however. Christopher Dawson, writing on ZDNet said while he likes Buzz, he believes it has been “so tainted by its launch” that it could be beyond repair.

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Social networking takes the strain in relationship breakups

Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010
Digital dumping of partners is on the rise, according to a survey compiled for a dating website.
Modern communications technology has had a major impact on the way people part with their partners, with growing numbers of people preferring to use email and social networking Web sites to break up with their partners.

Over one third (34 per cent) of 2,000 people polled said they had ended a relationship by email, 13 per cent had changed their status on Facebook without telling their partners and six per cent had released the news unilaterally on Twitter.

By contrast, only two per cent had broken up via a mobile phone text.

The rest had split up the old-fashioned way, by face-to-face conversation (38 per cent) and by telephone (eight per cent).

“Digital Dumping will soon take over when it comes to ending a relationship,” said Sean Wood, Marketing Manager for DateTheUk dating service, for whom the survey was carried out.

“It’s often easier, quicker and avoids any misunderstandings.”

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Posted in Facebook, Internet, Social Networks, Social News | No Comments »

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